Open Doors
by SiriusMarauderFan
Summary: Hannah's experiences through the war and after. one shot.


**Author's Note:** Thanks to my fabulous team, and Liza for betaing and helping me work through a difficult dry spell :)

Written for...

Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. _Team/Position:_ Falmouth Falcons, Seeker. _Task:_ write about a character who celebrates small moments in life.

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**Open Doors**

_1,030 words_

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It's early in the summer of 1997 when Alfred Abbott wakes his daughter before dawn and suggests they leave Britain without any idea where they will run to.

"We'll change our names and you'll be homeschooled for your last year. I think we can do it."

Hannah sits up in bed, taking in her father's disheveled state. He hasn't been the same since her mother was killed. "Won't they be watching us?"

"I don't think so. We haven't done anything to draw attention to ourselves since Gloria… since your mum passed. But it's now or never. They've made it mandatory that purebloods return to Hogwarts. It's your choice," he tells her, smoothing back her tousled blonde locks. "It would be hard, but at least you'd be safe."

It's tempting—at the very least, she thinks leaving will do wonders for her dad's paranoia—but Hannah knows deep down that she won't be able to go. She can't let Susan or anyone else go through it all alone.

:-:

She's reminded of her choice as she listens to Headmaster Snape introduce the deranged siblings who are to become her new professors. Across from her, Susan shoots her a worried glance, but Hannah smiles and piles her plate high with pastries and pudding.

"At least we still have sweets."

She feels awful for all of the first-years, excited to start their own adventures at Hogwarts but starting at the worst possible moment. It's for them as much as for Susan that Hannah decided to return.

She looks after them and the other little kids in Hufflepuff as best she can, helping with homework or keeping their spirits up. More often than she'd like, Hannah finds herself rushing to other dormitories in the middle of the night to soothe another nightmare.

"They told me I couldn't go home," little Darcy tells her between sobs. He's only twelve. Hannah recalls he spent detention with the Carrows that afternoon.

"You will," she assures him, brushing away his tears. "We'll all go home soon. We just need to stay strong and rely on each other."

She's hyper aware of her audience, Darcy's dorm mates and several other kids who had wandered in. She smiles cheerfully, as though she's not bothered by the state of her school.

"We have each other. That's all we need."

:-:

It becomes obvious to Hannah that she needs to take action against You-Know-Who.

She knows the DA has started up again, but concerns herself more with the wellbeing of her kids, as she's come to look at them.

At night she dares sneaking to the kitchens, a more more perilous journey than it used to be pre-Carrows. The house-elves are obliging, loading her arms with cakes and fruit and sandwiches at a moment's notice.

The Hufflepuff common room is suddenly transformed into a refuge of sorts. Hardly any of the younger kids sleep in their own beds anymore, choosing to pile into Hannah's instead, or more often she finds them in a nest of blankets and pillows in front of the common room fireplace. She makes it known to Neville and Padma, and even to a terrified little girl from Slytherin, that the common room is open to all houses. There is no point to house loyalty when everyone around her is hurting.

"You can't save everyone, Hannah," Ernie tells her bluntly after she fixes a cup of tea for a fifth-year who'd hidden from the Carrows out in the blizzard.

"Watch me."

:-:

By January, Neville and Susan convince Hannah to join the DA again, if only to help her to better watch over her kids. She stays in the common room, defiant and refusing to leave anyone alone, but checks in on those in the Room of Requirement daily.

Professor Sprout gives her a list of birthdays of all the Hufflepuff students, and Hannah makes sure every one of them are recognized and celebrated. She hangs balloons and streamers and asks the house-elves to make cakes. They play games and forget the horrors happening outside their door. Even without Hannah's help, they take to having fun on off days too.

"I think they're celebrating being alive," she tells Neville. "I don't blame them. I'm surprised no one's been killed yet."

"You're doing great with them. You're giving them hope, and that's something we could all do with right now."

:-:

She can't save everyone, no matter how hard she tries.

The battle is long and bloody. Hannah does what she can to keep everyone safe, but in end she mourns the loss of many friends. Colin and Lavender. Justin, she later learns, was killed by Snatchers in April.

Moving on is difficult, but she makes time for the funerals and hospital visits, and keeps in touch with as many of her kids as she can, knowing how much they're also struggling with moving on.

She convinces some of them to attend a weekly support group with her throughout the summer, even dragging along Neville when he's not dealing with auror business. For her, like so many, the meetings become the only thing keeping them together.

But the meetings end after a year. People stop attending and St. Mungo's decides they're no longer needed. Hannah disagrees. By then her dad has bought The Leaky Cauldron and she's running it for him. It surprises no one when she starts her own support group out of the back room.

Susan becomes a regular, along with several old classmates who have recently left school. They hang on her every word as she talks about her experiences and her healing since the war.

There are more that visit the Cauldron throughout the week, desperate and lonely, and Hannah can never bring herself to turn them away. She sits with them for long hours and listens to them talk about their struggles as she gives them a proper meal, never giving them the chance to turn to whiskey.

Everyone was too quick to move on, Hannah realizes, that so many people were left to suffer alone. It made her furious to think about it, but she would not be like them. She would always be there for anyone who needed her.


End file.
